How to boost the app notes on Google Play and App Store?
There are many ways to make users happier with your product improvements and new features. But I’m going to tell you about the quick win, which can increase your notes almost overnight — asking users to rate the app 😇
Thinking “if users like my app, they will rate it on their own” is the typical caveat of the humble founders. According to this study, average user has from 60 to 90 apps on his device. Can you imagine somebody going over all those apps and giving ratings? I can’t.
Users need a strong motivation to find your app on Google Play and give it the rating. It’s anger and disappointment, which usually drives them, and you can easily guess the note and review they leave. Happy users just use the app…
How to ask for feedback?
Once upon a time, developers used simple native dialogs, which were shown after X launches, and prompted users to rate the app. The quick and straightforward solution, which doesn’t work very well nowadays.
First of all, you shouldn’t ask for good notes only, you should ask for feedback — positive or negative. In such a way, users know you care about their opinions, not just boosting your mobile store notes.
The second issue to consider is when you are going to ask for feedback. It’s needed to make sure that users had enough time to get to know the app and become engaged with it. This is unique for each application, but for example: the app launched ten times, and at least one week passed since the install.
The third issue is the UI/UX implementation, which should flawlessly embed into your existing flow, and feel as its natural continuation. Most of the apps have lists of some sorts, which can be the perfect place to ask for feedback.
What’s about actual implementation?
Taking into account everything discussed above, we can design a simple but comprehensive flow, which looks like this:
With the first card, we are checking the user likes the app.
If so, he is redirected to the third card, which checks if he has time to rate the app on the App Store.
Otherwise, he is redirected to the 2nd card, which asks for giving constructive feedback through emailing the support.
Both “No, thanks” and all close buttons are turning the “lockout” period, which gives users one more week to get to know the app better.
Handling this flow and all edge cases can be quite tricky, so we’ve decided to implement it in our open-source Codeforces WatchR application, so the community can benefit. Here you can see iOS and Android pull requests.
As a bonus, business-logic is implemented in BaseFeedbackController, shared between platforms using Kotlin Multiplatform technology.
Conclusion
One of our humble clients didn’t like the idea of asking for feedback. As a result in 4 months rating on both stores went down well below 4.0 with most of the complains about the business side of project, not apps quality.
In February we’ve succeeded to convince our customer to try the rating flow described above. You can see what happened on the graph below 🚀 (No new major features were added in 2020).
On these screenshots, you can see ratings, which app has on Google Play and App Store in July 2020, with a few notes added each week.
So, please, don’t be shy about asking the feedback from your users. They are your best allies in making their experience exceptional.
Need a help making your mobiles apps shine? Don’t hesitate to drop us a line at hello@xorum.io.
